You see, every bite was awful. It wasn’t even really good bacon; it was cheap bacon bits scattered through the ice cream. But somehow, even though each mouthful was terrible, I couldn’t stop eating it.

It’s hard to match these repeatedly bad choices with our usual models of rational choice. You could say that my choices reveal a preference for bacon ice cream, but then that makes the theory of consumer choice a tautology.

My dinner colleague Tom Miles managed just one mouthful to satisfy his curiosity before reverting to his martini to wash away the bad taste. Yes, he’s a true Chicago economist, satisfying the usual axioms.